Unpopular opinion: Polymarket is the biggest fad in the crypto space this cycle. I will get a lot of hate for this but I believe it has to be said, and I also wanted to highlight a few major issues that can still be fixed before it's too late. Polymarket raising at 12b valuation here is EXACTLY the same as it was when OpenSea raised $300m in Series C at 13.3b valuation in 2022, imo. Absolute peak top, except OpenSea made well over 9 figures by then. As someone who grew up libertarian, seeing Polymarket launch a decentralized gambling platform was wet dream. I farmed the hell out of volume, I used it for betting, hedging and trading. I spent months on it. It is an amazing tool, people at the top are very competent and the marketing team is #1 by far. But that is where the story ends, and I'd like to focus on the negative aspects here. Main issues I have observed: 1. Volume is so fake that it is almost impossible to even estimate how much of it is real. I won't go into the details about how they count volume (because of incoming mid-curve takes that will say that there is always someone on the other side of trade), but my estimate is that over 80% of the volume is fake. You can literally risk-free run up $10m in volume in a day wash trading the exact same bet. I have seen $500m of volume washed by a single entity in the span of 2 months. 2. Shady markets. People have recently started becoming aware of certain issues - from blatant cabal-manipulated resolutions to easily manipulated markets being in the spotlight. This will kill Polymarket, imo. I don't know if leadership is aware of all potential issues they will face because people at the bottom and outsiders have been heavily profiting from this and slowly making Polymarket playground for the crime. I personally choose to believe that they aren't fully aware. Polymarket made perfect sense for betting on elections, NBA games or crypto prices long term. That is what it was supposed to remain - prediction market for stuff that won't be manipulated just because there is a PM market for it. Some scams are easier to execute, and the easiest ones are betting on coin launch date/ICO commitments. Metadao markets were absolutely perfect for this because ICOs don't have KYC or limit per wallet. The hustle is simple, bad actors can easily trap $5m+ in bets on these markets and then pump commitments up stupidly high making sale oversubscribed by 40x, dumping tokens on the market instantly and pocketing 30-100x on the bets. 1% NO bets go to 100% in the last few hours if enough money gets trapped. We have seen same manipulations happening with launch dates, where teams simply move TGE a day or two or even a week after planned launch and odds go from 90%+ to zero. It doesn't cost them anything - it's free money. We have seen manipulation even on Pokemon cards, and we see insider trading across all sectors daily. It is no longer prediction market when the outcomes of certain events are completely influenced by monetary gain on Polymarket. Gambling was regulated for a reason and I 100% believe that at certain point KYC will be absolutely mandatory, along with AML. There is no avoiding it. I also expect to see dozens of lawsuits and insider trading investigations in the coming years. Incentives to rig outcomes, from sports matches to coin launch dates are simply too high. I have also realized that simping for glorified gambling platform that became crime and insider fest doesn't really make any sense. Maybe Trump lets this slide for a while, but next administration won't. I also believe that airdrop will never happen. If it eventually does - it won't be worth anything due to insane amount of washed volume. There needs to be better curator system for markets and better resolution system ASAP. Product is great but unless something changes regulations and bad actors are going to destroy it. It turned into memecoin crimefest that we had on Solana. I don't blame Polymarket for this, but they need to fix curator and resolution system before it's too late. I would like to see them implement these changes to reduce illegal activity happening on their platform. I believe that it is in their best interest to avoid regulatory scrutiny, legal issues and bad PR. They should fix whatever they can by then because regulatory scrutiny is inevitable at this point. PM is one of the coolest products we had in a while but it is destroying itself slowly and people are losing trust in it. The way it is headed now- I don't have high hopes for it. Almost all my friends stopped using it, and I recently quit as well. I refuse to participate in these rigged games going forward - because this isn't a prediction market anymore. Retardio.